Symphony No. 40 in G minor, K. 550, was written by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in 1788. It is one of his most celebrated and widely performed works. Work on the symphony occupied an exceptionally productive period of just a few weeks during which time he also completed the 39th and 41st symphonies. Nikolaus Harnoncourt conjectured that Mozart composed the three symphonies as a unified work, pointing, among other things, to the fact that the Symphony No. 40, as the middle work, has no introduction (unlike No. 39) and does not have a finale of the scale of No. 41’s. The 40th symphony exists in two versions, differing primarily in that one includes parts for a pair of clarinets. Most likely, the clarinet parts were added in a revised version. The autograph scores of both versions were acquired in the 1860s by Johannes Brahms, who later donated the manuscripts to the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Vienna, where they reside today.
The symphony is scored for flute, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets (in the 2nd version of 1791), 2 bassoons, 2 horns, and strings. The work is in four movements, in the usual arrangement for a classical-style symphony (fast movement, slow movement, minuet, fast movement):
I. Molto allegro
The first movement begins darkly, not with its first theme but with the accompaniment, played by the lower strings with divided violas. The technique of beginning a work with an accompaniment figure was later used by Mozart in his last piano concerto (KV. 595) and later became a favourite of the Romantics (examples include the openings of Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto and Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Third Piano Concerto).
II. Andante
The second movement is a lyrical work in 68 time. It is in the subdominant key of the relative major of G minor (B♭ major): E♭ major. The contrapuntal opening bars of this movement appear thus in keyboard reduction:
III. Menuetto. Allegretto – Trio
The minuet begins with an angry, cross-accented hemiola rhythm and a pair of three-bar phrases, as shown in the following piano reduction: The severe character of the minuet stands in contrast to the form’s traditional use as dance music, a genre frequently used by Mozart. The contrasting gentle trio section, in G major, alternates the playing of the string section with that of the winds.
IV. Finale. Allegro assai
Simon P. Keefe points out that, unlike Mozart’s other works in G minor, in which the last movement is lighter in character, “Mozart’s unremittingly intense finale continues in the minor right up until the final chord”. The fourth movement opens with a series of rapidly ascending notes outlining the tonic triad illustrating what is commonly referred to as the Mannheim rocket. Zaslaw and Cowdery express their admiration of this movement thus: “[a] brilliant Finale, which takes bourrée rhythm, attaches it to a Mannheim “rocket” … and turns the unlikely mixture into a propulsive sonata form movement of enormous proportions”. A remarkable modulating passage in which every tone in the chromatic scale but one is played, strongly destabilising the key, occurs at the beginning of the development section; the single note left out is G (the tonic):
Zaslaw and Cowdery write, “… the G minor Symphony is a key work in understanding the link between musical Classicism and musical Romanticism …” During the 19th century, as interest in 18th century music declined, the impassioned character of the 40th Symphony kept it steadily in the symphonic repertoire. The high esteem in which it was held can be judged by references to it in the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung, which praised it as “a true masterpiece” (in 1804), “Mozart’s symphony of all symphonies” (1809) and a “classical masterwork” (1813).
